LDE Webinars

Upcoming Webinars

No-one is too disabled to have an eye test

Friday, 27th September 2019

10.00 – 11.00

If you think people have to be able to read or speak to have a sight test – or you think people with learning disabilities can never be prescribed glasses – join us to become Eye Care Aware and find out why the myths around communication and eye care are being busted by our eye care team!

Lisa Donaldson

Lisa Donaldson is SeeAbility’s Head of Eye Health and is an optometrist with a special interest in paediatrics and learning disabilities. Lisa leads the SeeAbility team providing sight tests to children in special schools.

Scott Watkin

Scott Watkin BEM is SeeAbility’s Head of Engagement is very well known in the social care sector and has good links with many learning disability organisations. He has living experience of learning disabilities and sight problems.

Aylee Richmond

Aylee Richmond is a Senior Eye Care Advisor at SeeAbility. She is a qualified Vision Rehabilitation Worker and helps people to make the best use of their available vision.

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Gloriously Ordinary Lives

Rescheduled

Friday, 18th October 2019

10.00 – 11.00

Four areas of Greater Manchester have been working to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities. The programme has worked with people and families and has focused on people who were most at risk of ending up in institutional settings. They concentrated on work supporting young people, preparing for adulthood, and working with providers to prepare for people coming home.

The webinar will talk about the programme and explore the work done in two of the four areas, Rochdale and Wigan.

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Upcoming Webinars

More information coming soon!

October: Social Work Capabilities Statement

November: Declare your Care Campaign

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Past Webinars

United Pride Friends: Being Out, Proud and Autistic

Friday, 21st June 2019

10.00 – 11.00

A new group for members of the LGBT Community with Autism and Learning Difficulties, United Pride Friends, has been set up in the North West.

The primary purpose of our group is to provide a befriending service, giving members a safe place to meet new people and make friends.

The group aims to build the confidence of its members through workshops and social events, as well as providing educational sessions where we will discuss topics that affect this community such as safe sex, dealing with homophobia and ableism, and coming out to friends and family.

This webinar will talk about what United Pride Friends is, what it does and why it was set up. There will be an opportunity to ask questions at the end.

Our presenter

Michael Chick

Michael Chick came up with the idea of starting the group. He is a gay man from Wigan in the North West of England and founder of United Pride Friends.

Michael found that although there are service for LGBT people available, there are little to none for those who are LGBT with autism. He faced other issues due to being autistic with learning difficulties, such as homophobia and discrimination both in the private and public care sectors.

Michael wanted to challenge this discrimination so set up United Pride Friends.

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Friday, April 26th 2019

10.00 – 11.00

Stay Up Late’s Gig Buddies project matches people with learning disabilities with a volunteer who shares the same cultural interests to help people build stronger informal support networks and make new friendships.

In this session Paul will explain how it works, and how it’s delivering some ‘serious outcomes’ for people in a way that doesn’t feel at all serious, in fact it feels like an awful lot of fun!

Paul Richards

Paul is a founder, and the director of the charity Stay Up Late. The charity grew out of the experiences of the punk band ‘Heavy Load’ that he played bass with for 15 years. Heavy Load were also the subjects of the feature length documentary movie of the same names (which Mark Kermode rates as one of the top 5 music documentaries of the 21st century!).

Stay Up Late also pioneered Gig Buddies, the innovative volunteer befriending project which relieves social isolation through a shared love of the same cultural activities. The model is now being shared across the UK (and Australia).

Paul previously worked as the registered manager of a group home for people with learning disabilities and was the Involvement Manager’ for Southdown Housing Association. More recently he was the National Co-production Adviser for Think Local Act Personal.

Paul’s passion is ending inequality for people with learning disabilities and when he’s not working he can be found spending too much money in record shops or walking on the South Downs with his family. He has 4 kids and a dog and lives in Hove.
His catch phrase is ‘Keep It Punk!’

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No HOLD’s Barred – everything you ever wanted to know about Home Ownership for people with Long-term Disabilities (HOLD)

Friday, March 22 2019

Although it’s been around since 1997, helping significant numbers of individuals with a wide range of different disabilities to buy homes of their own, many people still think HOLD’s too good to be true.

So LDE members MySafeHome Limited (who support people who want to buy a home using HOLD) are inviting any questions about this unique Government approved homeownership model that their Managing Director, David Abbey (himself a member of LDE’s Representative Body) will answer in a live webinar.

Whatever you want to know about HOLD this is your chance to find out, in fact, the tougher and more in-depth the questions the better!

David Abbey has worked in the financial services sector since 1984 and is a fully qualified Financial Adviser.

Back in 1997, he was invited to join a ‘steering group’ to develop a process to enable people with a disability (who also rely on benefits for their income) to buy a home of their own. The result was a unique Government approved shared ownership model, known as HOLD (Home Ownership for people with Long-term Disabilities).

David then established MySafeHome Limited to provide everyone involved in helping people with disabilities realise their dream of home ownership with the support they need and to date almost 1,300 individuals have used HOLD to buy their own home.

Passionate about the personalisation agenda David is the UK’s subject matter expert in homeownership for people with disabilities and in July 2017 was honoured to be elected to the LDE Representative Body.